Killzone 2 Review

Killzone. The “Halo killer”. The game that was supposed to be Sony’s big exclusive franchise that would make us all forget about Halo. Well, that didn’t happen, since the first game in the series turned out to be quite the mediocre game, at best. One has to question what Sony’s motive was for even making a sequel to it. Maybe they thought the developers could fix their mistakes from the first time around and deliver the game the original Killzone should’ve been.

Well, that didn’t happen. What we got was a textbook example of style over substance, a game that looks good in videos but is absolutely terrible in practice. Killzone 2 hardly does anything right, and if you’ll bear with me, I’ll explain why.

The campaign is an endless slog through a series of brain-dead enemies that are so mentally challenged that they often forget you exist in the middle of a shootout. But don’t worry; Killzone 2’s answer for this is to throw them at you by the dozens. This wouldn’t be so irritating if they didn’t soak up bullets and flak like they were made of Kevlar on the higher difficulties. Or maybe if your squadmates weren’t equally stupid or maybe if their guns actually did decent amounts of damage (if they could aim the fucking things to begin with). Or maybe if, in a game with the familiar two weapon loadout, your choice of sidearm wasn’t so piss weak against them. Never before have I encountered a revolver in a game that can’t drop a standard infantryman with an entire cylinder’s worth of rounds.

This game isn’t fun to play through particularly because it’s held back by some of the most awful gunplay and controls I’ve experienced on a console shooter. Everything is heavy and sluggish to the point that the simple act of aiming becomes a chore. I feel like I’m slogging through molasses playing this game and aiming feels slippery and imprecise like Perfect Dark Zero. Plus, I did not like the first person cover system at all. I understand the idea that switching to a third person view would’ve broken the immersion but I’d rather have some immersion breaking than having to deal with this. It’s unique, but it isn’t good.

Some may say “it’s meant to be realistic!” but quite frankly, if this is “realism”, I’ll stick to games like Halo, Battlefield and Call of Duty. You know, fun shooters. If I wanted realism in a shooter done right, I’d play ArmA. But I don’t. So screw that game too.

But that’s not even the worst part about Killzone 2. No. The worst is yet to come.

The worst thing about this game is that Rico Velasquez exists within it. Rico, the king of all dumb, pea-brained meatheads, a man who can’t go more than thirty seconds without uttering his favorite word. Fuck. A man who, in any competent military, would’ve been court-martialed and imprisoned as far away from any conflict as possible. From the very start I knew he would be a bad character but I didn’t know just how bad he’d be until his reaction to a locked door and being too dumb to know how to open it (which is apparently as easy as opening it and pulling all the wires out…seriously) was “Fuck this!”, followed immediately by shooting the control panel with his LMG.

Really?

When I think of the worst characters in gaming history from here on, Rico will always pop into my head. Fuck Rico. I’ve never hated a character in gaming as much as I hate Rico. He makes Black/Latino people look bad. No, scratch that. He makes people look bad.

But it all comes down to the writing. Sure, his voice actor was about as far from merely decent as one can get but you have to consider the tripe he had to work with. I refuse to believe he sat down in the booth to record his lines and decided to ad-lib every single one of the “fucks” he utters throughout the campaign. No, a team of writers had to write this for him. It was in the fucking script (shit, it’s contagious). At least in, say, Gears of War, you could sense some degree of self-awareness in the characters, like even they know how badly they’re hamming it up (Well, until Gears of War 2 happens and everything takes a turn for the ridiculously melodramatic). Killzone 2’s writing is almost universally bad, from the cliché filled and nonsensical plot, the disgustingly cheesy one-liners and the one dimensional characters.

And then there’s Sergeant Sevchenko, the protagonist. A guy who’s mostly silent throughout the game except to crack wise, scream for a medic once his buddy gets shot and collapses from his injury and yell “Rico, no!” every time Rico and his idiot brain decides to fuck things up for everyone.

At best, the characters in Killzone 2 are throwaways; more than a stone’s throw away from decent but mostly inoffensive. They’re stock characters. You’ve got your dumb meathead; you’ve got your smart-ish meathead who can “hack” doors open for you and ends up dying because of Rico’s idiocy, you’ve got your heroic colonel who will inevitably and pointlessly sacrifice himself for the cause and go down with the ship (literally) and you’ve got your evil colonel who speaks in a calm, eloquent manner and with a distinctly posh British accent, further exacerbating his evilness. But don’t worry; the game turns him into a gigantic pussy by making him, the illustrious and evil Colonel Radec, off himself rather than dying nobly in battle with his adversaries. This is the action of a coward, not a never-say-die Colonel.

A lot of hoopla was made about Killzone 2’s graphics being hot shit when it came out. And maybe back in 2009, it was. For a console game, I can imagine this was pretty impressive stuff. Now, however, I really don’t know why people fawned over it. It’s ugly, to say the least; an endless morass of brown and grey with some decent lighting and shadowing tricks thrown in for spice, some nice looking fire rounded out with gross, low-res textures to say the most. Perhaps I would be able to forgive this if the game ran at a decent clip but it doesn’t even do that right. Sure, it manages 30fps most of the time but the framerate has the disgusting tendency to nosedive when things get hectic, most obnoxiously during the final mission, which nearly got me killed on more than one occasion.

The only saving grace Killzone 2 has is in its multiplayer. Somehow, by some sort of black magic, the controls become tolerable and the game is genuinely fun. But since the online community for Killzone 2 has all but one limb in the grave at this point, there’s little reason to bother with it.

In conclusion, fuck this game. I didn’t want to hate it but after finishing the campaign on Veteran, which I shouldn’t have bothered with since you get no further bonuses for doing that as opposed to completing it on lower difficulties, I do. Maybe it’s because I played this nearly four years after its release, during which time I’ve played many much better shooters. No, the game was crap then and is crappier now that the multiplayer is a ghost town.

Maybe Killzone 3 will be the game that finally gets it right. Maybe. I’ve heard complaints (!) that the controls were tightened and reworked so maybe Guerilla Games came to their senses and made a game that’s actually fun. It’s on my shelf, ready to be played, but after the bad taste Killzone 2 left in my mouth, I’m in no hurry. But the important thing is that this game sucks. Avoid it. Even if all you want is a multiplayer shooter, there are far better options than this tripe.

About Justin McBride

My name is Justin McBride and I’m a guy who enjoys writing, playing games and writing about playing games. Sound lame enough yet? Well, I have other interests as well such as hanging out with friends, watching TV, going to the movies from time to time, surfing the internet, listen to good music, drive at speeds I shouldn’t be driving at and so on. The problem is, that’s all stuff everyone likes to do, so why write about it?
Oh wait, seems I just did. Oops.

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Disclaimer: As of this writing, I have not played Gran Turismo 6 but I did …

Rico

Wow, some no name piss ant “reviewer” doesn’t like Killzone 2 because he is too big of a pussy to handle it. It’s funny that when someone SUCKS at playing a game, it’s always the games fault. I’ve heard this same dumb ass excuse on other games too. It’s always by some little pussy that couldn’t do as well as the grownups playing, or for that matter the 10 year olds either. Killzone 2 multiplayer is one hell of an experience to play, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun for those of us that actually have balls. I say fuck you & your so called review too. Oh, I think I hear yo Momma calling dipshit.

Wow, you sound mad. Are you mad? Mad that I didn’t like this piece of shit game?

I couldn’t care less if some prick on the internet doesn’t like my reviews. And I love the common “Oh, he doesn’t like this game I like, that must mean he sucked at it” excuse all you clowns use. Nope, no one’s allowed to dislike a game simply because it’s a shitty game, no, he obviously couldn’t handle it.

And wow, you used a “yo momma” joke. How the fuck old are you, twelve? Get back to the basement, junior.

Just played through this myself for the first time. I replayed Killzone and only years later realized how mediocre to bad of a game it was. When I first played I wasn’t impressed, but I had forgotten just how awful the story and characters were. Oh my GOD, unbelievable. Even playing this by myself, I was embarrassed by what I had witnessed.

I agree with you nearly 100% on all of your points, I think you really nailed just how awful the controls were. The camera flies all over the place yet you have such a narrow field of vision. It happens whenever you take any action. No matter what you input there’s also a small delay both before and after you move. Combined with bullet sponge enemies and dual shock 3 not being the best controller for FPS, it’s agonizing just playing this. Do I play as Sev or Michael J Fox? Do I even fucking care?

Besides the lightning gun and one or two others, every gun is the same. None of them have a feel to them, they’re so generic. It was more rewarding to run past enemies than shoot them (and faster, and more challenging lol).

I guess the game can really be summed up by this though: infinite respawns. There are only a couple of areas that have this, but it is the icing on the cake of this cake made of shit. And it isn’t even the “defend this point for X time” infinite respawns. It’s the “slowly inch up while killing the same 5 enemies that keep spawning” except that there are few places that actually have cover that works – everywhere else you can sit behind that chest level wall, but the helgast won’t have any problem hitting you. Cool, a crappy broken cover system in a cover based shooter? Amazing job.

No wonder Colonel Radec killed himself, if I was associated with this game I would too.

Fuck that fucking fuck Rico

I finally came back to beat this game after several years because I don’t like to leave any games that I pay money for unfinished. Thankfully, I was already on the last level, but holy shit I fucking hate Rico. Even his Giantbomb page says that he is universally hated by fans. He represents the worst of humanity. I agree with your review in its entirety, even if it had its fun moments (mostly when you spray into an enemy at close range when the game’s goryness comes into beautiful high definition). Otherwise, the shooting in this game is no fun since aiming is sluggish (yes I know this was a deliberate style choice, but it is a constant obstacle) and enemies are indeed bullet sponges.

splitchin

I wouldn’t force my worst enemy to play Killzone: Shadow Fall. It sure is pretty to look at, but my god, the gameplay, story, and characters are terrible. It is the last Killzone game I will ever play, and it made me seriously question why I bought a PS4.

Dichotomy676

I could not agree more, with everything you said here, especially concerning Rico Velasquez who was by far the most irritating and inane character I’ve ever had the displeasure to experience as a constant companion throughout a game. Every single time he opened his mouth I was instantly furious. I hated him with a passion. Which, admittedly, is probably what they were going for, but for different reasons. There was a point in the game where I emptied a number of clips into his fat head just for the pure joy it brought me. I forced myself to finish this game simply because that’s my compulsion. Thankfully it only cost me $3, used.

About Me

Welcome to my personal website, The Mind of Game.

My name is Justin McBride and I’m a guy who loves writing, playing games and writing about playing games. In my spare time, I’m usually writing, gaming or listening to my massive music collection. I’m also something of an audiophile and can talk your ear off about the benefits of lossless encoding and how you really need to drop those cheap earbuds and upgrade to some serious headphones.

Seriously. Get rid of those things.

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